Quote

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

George Santayana

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George Santayana
Age: 88 †
Born: 1863
Born: October 2
Died: 1952
Died: September 16
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Madrid
Spain
Jorge Santayana
Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana
Jorge Augustin Nicolas Ruiz de Santayana
George Santayana
Make
Bands
Good
Jazz
Things
Kindness
Veneer
Theater
Rouge
Band
Impotent
Football
Theaters
Art
Etc
America
Museums

More quotes by George Santayana

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Towers in a modern town are a frill and a survival they seem like the raised hands of the various churches, afraid of being overlooked, and saying to the forgetful public, Here I am! Or perhaps they are rival lightning rods, saying to the emanations of divine grace, Please strike here!
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To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.
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The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients.
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To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
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Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
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Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.
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A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.
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To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation to elude oneself is the romantic.
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We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.
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The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine.... If we dramatize its life and conceive its spirit, we are filled with wonder, terror and amusement, so magnificent is the spirit.
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Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith.
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The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence
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The world is not respectable it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.
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We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.
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In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that.
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Fear first created the gods.
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There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.
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We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.
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It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.
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Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light.
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